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INTERVIEWS

Andreas Varady: Guitar Wizard On The Rise

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Listening to Andreas Varady play guitar, it's difficult to guess his age. Its not just the fleet fingers across the fret board, the subtle bending of notes and the dexterity. Many young players display those features. He possesses a warm tone, a mature style with free-flowing ideas that go to interesting places. His style is mature and he's a teller of stories. Mature and strong enough to impress Quincy Jones, who brought the guitarist into his management company ...

MULTIPLE REVIEWS

A Six-String Travelogue

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Leni Stern 3 Leni Stern Recordings 2018 If it's an exaggeration to say that Leni Stern's gone native after her life-shaping time in Senegal, it's probably not by much. 3 isn't the result of merely studying and and learning a few new forms, but an unrestrained immersion in the life and traditions of a region that's grown close to her heart. The short-ish running time still makes room for a touch of flamenco, ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Pablo Ziegler Trio: Jazz Tango

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Jazz Tango--winner of the 2018 Grammy for “Best Latin Jazz Album"--is a distillation of pianist Pablo Ziegler's vision. Leading a trio of American-based Argentinians, Ziegler delivers a program that perfectly encapsulates the titular hybridized form that he knows so well. This exhilarating outing opens on Nuevo Tango patriarch Astor Piazzolla's “Michelangelo 70," a number simultaneously referencing a famed Buenos Aires tango club and the composer's year of departure for Europe. With some chromatic zest and loads of ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Angelika Niescier - Christopher Tordini - Tyshawn Sorey: The Berlin Concert

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For almost twenty years, German saxophonist Angelika Niescier has been creating forward-thinking jazz that expertly straddles the line between intricate structure and freewheeling energy. Nowhere was this aesthetic vision realized more acutely than on NYC Five (Intakt Records, 2016), her quintet album co-led with pianist Florian Weber. A delightful and infectious release, it signaled Niescier's rise to prominence among the front ranks of contemporary jazz musicians, a status further solidified the following year when she won the Albert Mangelsdorff Prize, ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Meg Okura: IMA IMA

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Heritage isn't merely defined by blood and DNA. It's about who we are, who we choose to become, and what we take from the past to bring to our individual present and presence. So says this most personal of albums from Meg Okura & The Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble. “Ima"--the Hebrew word for “mother" and a Japanese word for “now"--stands as a three-letter summation of Okura's being with its cross-language connections and meaning. It represents her ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Alyson Murray: Breathe

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Alyson Murray has been performing since the age of sixteen, receiving an Outstanding Potential Award from the Australian Girls Choir (AGC), where she was also selected to perform in The Boy From Oz, a Hugh Jackman production in Melbourne. Murray went on to complete her Bachelor of Fine Art Contemporary Music in '15 at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), where she was awarded the Agnes Robertson Contemporary Music Foundation Scholarship in her first year. In her final year, ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Dan Wilensky: Good Music

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“There are only two kinds of music. Good Music and the other kind." So said Duke Ellington, and probably a whole bunch of other people. Good Music is saxophonist Dan Wilensky's examination of music for music's sake, his unpretentious “serving the music" recording. Seven of the four tunes are chordless trio affairs, bringing--as a touchstone--Sonny Rollins' groundbreaking A Night At the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1958) to mind with its fearless flexibility and Wilensky's muscular and assured tone. ...

PROFILES

The Bach's Beach Vision Of Jazz Heaven

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Heaven for some is a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield. For Pete Douglas, it was a house on a beach with a jazz club in his living room, a would-be heaven also for anyone who dropped in. Douglas passed on, in 2014 at age 85, sitting at his desk overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But his vision lingers at the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, aka the Douglas Beach House, at Miramar Beach on Half Moon Bay in Northern California ...

BAILEY'S BUNDLES

Seven Women 2018 – Part VI

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Jazz vocals remains a vibrant and productive subgenre as evidenced by this spate of recent releases. Diane Marino Soul Serenade: The Gloria Lynne Project M&M Records 2018 Singer Gloria Lynne had a long and productive career, one that remained unjustly in the shade, deserving of the attention that it is getting now from singer Diane Marino on Soul Serenade: The Gloria Lynne Project. Marino began on piano, studies with Murray Perahia at ...

CD/LP/TRACK REVIEW

Yokada: Stillness & Sirens

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A new Stockholm-based piano trio, Yokada, has released their debut recording on Lisa Ullén's Disorder label. Though the sparse liner notes give no indication, it is a safe assumption that the trio's name comes from Andrew Hill's “Yokada Yokada" on Judgment! (Blue Note, 1964). This release--Stillness and Sirens--features one composition that is a tribute to Hill. The members of the trio have previously worked together in partial combinations and their ability to put the recording portion of Stillness ...